2026 Steering Committee Candidate Information
Published: Nov 13, 2026
Candidates for the 2026 US-RSE Steering Committee election are listed below. Because the number of available seats (4) for this term is not more than the number of candidates, these candidates will automatically assume Steering Committee seats beginning on January 1, 2027.
If you have questions for the candidates, please use the #election channel on Slack.
Candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
More information about the candidates can be found below.
Cordero Core
Email
Profile: LinkedIn, Personal website, Medium
Why do you want to be on the US-RSE Steering Committee?
For most of my career I did research software engineering without knowing it had a name. As a chemist I built molecular dynamics analysis tools, then imaging software for an FDA medical device at Pathware, then 3D modeling tools at The Aerospace Corporation. I was writing the software the research depended on, usually without anyone down the hall who did the same thing. Now I do it full time at UW’s Scientific Software Engineering Center, helping researchers in any field turn their code into open, tested software.
US-RSE was the first place that work felt like a profession. That’s why I’m rebuilding our website and creating a membership system: I want the next RSE who joins to find their people faster than I did. I’d also like to help finish the bylaws work we started at our 2026 retreat.
It’s also why I write about research software engineering on Medium and Substack. Our members do work worth talking about, and more people should hear about it.
How do you participate in the US-RSE Association?
I joined US-RSE in April 2023, a month after starting at UW’s Scientific Software Engineering Center, and started the Seattle regional group so RSEs here would have a place to find each other. By that fall I was leading community engagement for the national conference. I’ve kept doing it since. This year that meant organizing the Women in RSE meetup at USRSE’26, making sponsor introductions, and helping balance the submission reviews.
Along the way I’ve shared my own work at the conference, starting with a poster on SSEC’s ““RSE as a Service”” model at US-RSE’24, and I was back as a speaker at US-RSE’25. Outside the conference, I write about research software engineering on Medium and Substack, trying to show people what this work looks like day to day.
Since January 2025 I’ve served on the Steering Committee as Elections Co-Chair and Conference Liaison. I helped plan our 2026 retreat, where we started the governance and bylaws conversations an organization our size can’t put off anymore.
The project I care most about right now is the one I wish had existed when I started. I’m rebuilding the US-RSE website and creating a membership system so we can be more connected as a community. Members will be able to find each other in a directory they control, get pointed to affinity groups that fit them, and have a profile that shows their conference talks and ORCID work. I’m more than 50 pull requests in, aiming to launch by the end of 2026.
Drew Paine
Email
Profile: Personal website, LinkedIn
Why do you want to be on the US-RSE Steering Committee?
My career spans software engineering and human centered design with the major through line being supporting teams and community. I would like to be on the Steering Committee for a few reasons. First, is to continue fostering pathways for more “non-traditional” RSE type roles. User Experience is one example that has grown with my and others support. I suspect there are more. Second, would be to help grow the conference based on my experiences on the organizing committee the past two years, as well as in other academic/engineering spaces. This is one of our most important community activities and I want to help the Steering Committee streamline the process further. Third, as a US National Labs employee I want to sustain representation for this constituency which has a wide array of stakeholders contributing to the US-RSE community, often with slightly different concerns than RSEs in other environments.
How do you participate in the US-RSE Association?
I participate consistently in US-RSE activities, both virtually and in person. I am active in the community via Slack frequently. I welcome newcomers, share information, and encourage participation in working group channels. I attend various virtual community events as often as possible and encourage members of my team to do so (many of whom help organize and run these activities, and I helped co-found the UX Working Group). I engage with the community in person at US-RSE conferences and the RSEs in HPC workshop that many members support. I volunteered as Talks Co-Chair for USRSE’25 and Technical Program Co-Chair for USRSE’26. I also served on the program committee for RSEs in HPC 2025 and 2026 and volunteer at the US-RSE booth at Supercomputing. All these opportunities are fun, engaging, and rewarding ways to meet others and help socialize the community to different stakeholders.
Julia Damerow
Why do you want to be on the US-RSE Steering Committee?
I’ve been very passionate about research software development since I started working in this space. My passion translates into activities that bring people together and build networks. I co-founded DHTech (a community for people developing software in digital humanities) and established a community of practice for RSEs at Arizona State University.
Since 2021, I’ve been on the US-RSE Steering Committee and I’ve been the US-RSE Treasurer for almost as long. A key priority for me in continuing on the Steering Committee and as Treasurer is to establish a transition process for the Treasurer role to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of our organization.
Furthermore, while I’m part of the School of Complex Adaptive Systems at ASU, I’m also still very active in the digital humanities community. I would like to continue to be a voice for digital humanities RSEs within US-RSE and continue to serve our amazing community and its members.
How do you participate in the US-RSE Association?
I have been on the US-RSE Steering Committee since 2021 and have served as its Treasurer since 2022. In this role, I have supported US-RSE’s transition to our current fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives (CI), and continue to work closely with CI on financial matters for US-RSE. I’ve been involved with the financial side of every USRSE conference and generally handle US-RSE’s day-to-day financial transactions. While I have decided to step down as community call working group co-chair, I have been co-organizing US-RSE’s monthly community calls for the past couple of years. I contribute as a member of the Code Review Working Group, and have co-organized the US-RSE Virtual Workshops in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, I co-chaired the first US-RSE conference.
In addition to my work with US-RSE, I serve on the steering committee of DHTech, a community of people doing technical work in digital humanities. DHTech hosts virtual meetups, conference workshops, and a bi-monthly newsletter. I am actively involved in the DHTech Community Code Review Working Group that organizes code reviews for digital humanities projects.
At Arizona State University, I worked with HR to develop formal RSE job titles and I developed a graduate level course on research software engineering fundamentals. I’ve been an instructor for the INTERSECT bootcamp and I am part of the Education and Training Working Group of DHTech that develops software development resources targeted at digital humanities practitioners.
Miranda Mundt
Email
Profile: Personal website
Why do you want to be on the US-RSE Steering Committee?
This past term, US-RSE has kept setting precedents, and I have gotten to help guide some of the biggest ones. As the association has grown, we’ve started reworking our governance documents so they match who we are now, not who we were when they were written. We’ve also had to look at new avenues for fiscal sustainability, rethink how we manage membership, and new cybersecurity considerations, making sure US-RSE can support its community for the long haul and not just the next year.
I still don’t feel done serving as a Steering Committee member, and my appreciation for this amazing community continues to grow. So many of the big changes aren’t done, and I’d like to help see them through. In the next term, I am dedicated to finishing the governance revamp, focusing on long-term sustainability, and upholding our mission to provide a welcoming place for RSEs around the country and globe to connect and grow.
How do you participate in the US-RSE Association?
I have been a member of US-RSE since 2020 and have been an active member of multiple working groups including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Outreach; and the Group Management Working Group. During my first term on the Steering Committee, I was one of the creators of the Community and Travel Funds program and acted as the co-General Chair for US-RSE’24 in Albuquerque, NM. In the last two years, I have continued to contribute to many precedential decisions as a member of the Steering Committee, as well as leading the US-RSE Awards program in 2025 and serving as the Sponsorship Chair for both USRSE’26 and USRSE’27. Outside US-RSE, I have taken on a role as a Department Editor for the Research Software Engineering department in Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE), and I lead a Research Software Engineering Community of Practice within Sandia National Laboratories. In my “day job,” I act as both a researcher and practitioner with a focus on software engineering for scientific projects and fundamental research into research software engineering topics such as reproducibility and testing, as well as dipping my toes into integrating LLMs into data pipelines in a fully traceable/provenance-focused manner.